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Do it yourself
For information about other Squadrons or the wartime RAF, there are plenty of books and on-line sources: the Glossary, Sources and Sites & Links pages may help in your search.
If you prefer books, start in a good library: see Books below. If you’d prefer to start on-line, see The Internet, below. Either way, if you’re after a particular person or unit, Service records or unit histories, below, may help.
Starting from scratch
If you have a place to start, all you need is patience and curiosity: about the what, why, how and when of things. Anyone can do it and we were all beginners once. Here are some suggestions.
Thinking about it
What are you starting with? How much can it tell you? Is there a date, a name, a service number, or any other personal or unit information shown? Where did the item come from and what came with it? How much of the story do you want to know more about?
List the key things you know about it. Think: which bits are worth following? Which bits might be easiest to start with?
Books
With the right books, you can get familiar with the background and find your way into the detail at your own pace. It may be helpful to look for more general books to begin with if starting from scratch. Books about the campaign or the aircraft your subject was associated with may lead you to official histories and Unit or personal histories.
The Sources page lists all the books and official documents referred to in research for this site. Most of the books should be found through a good library, or by InterLibrary Loan.
There is no shortage of good (second hand) bookshops with a military bent. A reasonable set of war bibliographies is maintained by Stone & Stone while the the British Aviation Archaeology Council keeps a growing list of RAF Squadron books on its Research page.
The various official histories of World War II for the RAF, the RAAF, the RCAF and the RNZAF are indispensable for getting a feel for each theatre and sometimes remarkable in the level of personal and unit detail. Those for the RAF and RAAF are listed on Sources page.
If very lucky you may find a good, tightly focussed, carefully documented book to start with. A book that includes a bibliography, a set of source notes and a good index may richly reward careful reading with fresh leads. It is worth following up to see what else that author wrote.
Never, never, never cut things out of books or magazines. You are destroying information for future researchers. Keep copies, with title and author details recorded.
Libraries
You will find more accurate, in-depth information in libraries and in archives than on the Internet. At your Library you should find an on-line public access catalogue. Learn how to use it. For example, once you’ve found a book you know is relevant, as well as checking for other books by that author, check what other books lie under the same Catalogue code, or under the same Subject heading. Ask the staff about other national and overseas catalogues and using the InterLibrary Loan system to get the book you need. Links to UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand National Library services are shown on the Site and Links page.
Magazines and newspapers of the period are readily available in major libraries. The Illustrated London News, The Tatler, The Sphere, The Aeroplane and Flight may all have articles of interest. The last two, for example, carry notices of deaths in pre-war RAF accidents, and brief summaries of RAF decorations throughout the war. The Gallantry awards page lists the standard references for awards of the Distinguished Flying Cross and Distinguished Flying Medal.
Bookshops and catalogues
There are a number of fine sites that offer book search facilities for new and second-hand books. There are also many good bookshops with a military focus and a Website catalogue. Books out of print for 60 years or more can be unearthed in libraries and on the market by patient searching.
Of the listings services, the widest reach across booksellers and book lists, whether rare, second-hand or new, is offered by Bookfinder.
The Internet
No PC at home? Check at your local library (see above). Many offer public access to the Internet. Just ask the librarian for a little help to get started.
The Sites & Links page offers a selection of official sites and other personal sites like this. Look for national archives and library sources, or local historical societies and relevant Associations first.
Official sites
The RAF and RAAF sites have historical summaries on Squadrons and their aircraft. Of the UK sources, the National Archives (Public Record Office), the Imperial War Museum, and the RAF Museum sites all now have helpful on-line guides and catalogues. For the RAF, a Squadron’s Operations Record Book is the primary source for details of aircrew, aircraft and operations - these are available in the UK National Archives.
The Australian War Memorial site has a great deal of its information on-line (honour rolls, photos, catalogue, RAAF Squadron histories). The National Archives of Australia likewise has on-line guides, catalogue, photos and digitised personal and official records (including RAAF Squadron Operations Record Books). The Commonwealth War Graves Commission site is very valuable if your subject died in the course of the war. See also Service records or unit histories, below.
The Aeroplane and Flight have partial or complete archives of past issues on-line. The National Library of Australia holds a growing searchable digital collection of national newspaper issues. A similar initiative in New Zealand is at Papers Past http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast.
Personal sites
Although the Web is an ever-widening and often shallow stream, fine personal sites do exist. Quirky or klutzy design may not matter. Content does matter. Do the site pages show some sign of careful work (in ease of navigation, in originality, and in the accuracy and depth of information)? Can you spot any serious howlers? Does the site respect copyright? Does it make an effort to acknowledge and attribute sources properly, so that you can find them too? Is there a good, relevant set of links that work? Is the site updated regularly? Is the owner/compiler at least identifiable and preferably contactable, say through an Enquiries or Contact page? Will they reply (first ask yourself “Do I really need to ask?”).
Web Searching
Google may not be perfect but it remains head and shoulders above all the other search engines, new and old, for finding web content. It has the widest scope of all search engines, and the best results on page relevance. Image finding is still a testing task for any engine, but Google performs quite reasonably, while other recent arrivals produce consistently ludicrous results.
With Google, at least, searches are now improving inside areas such as the catalogues of archives, libraries and bookshops. Meanwhile, Google Books and Google Maps provide other fruitful avenues for research. See Do it yourself for more hints on these sources.
It may still be worth using search engines in combination. Repeating your search on the same keywords at intervals (say every 3 months) to check for fresh references may also pay dividends.
Getting only rubbish? Look for the search options for that “engine”. They are not all the same. The Any words option often produces a forest of irrelevance. The All words option may help, while the Exact phrase option, or bracketting keywords (like this: “211 Squadron”) can work very well indeed if you are sure of your terms.
A good page that explains Internet search and search engines is the National Library of Australia page: Searching the Internet.
Message boards
Stumped? Try an on-line message board or forum by all means. There’s no shortage on World War II matters, readily found via Google.
It’s advisable to look at board rules, content, and style of the “posts” before posting yourself. If you can, start as a guest and don’t put your email address in plain view if you needn’t. Writing ALL IN CAPITALS is thought very impolite. You may also be surprised how many bullies and smart alecks throw their anonymous weight around in cyberspace. And there may be really offensive spam posts.
Service records or unit histories
Full name is all but a necessity. Service number is a very great advantage, while date of birth or period of service may be useful, and Squadron helpful.
Printed sources
There are plenty of these, to be found in major libraries and war museums. For more books, see the Sources page, and for Libraries and Museums see the Sites and Links page.
- For RAF officers, the Air Force List provides useful details of rank, seniority and service no (those up to January 1939 also have current posting as well). The RAAF Air Force List, the RCAF Air Force List and the RNZAF Air Force List provide equivalent records for officers of those services
- For those lost in action or taken PoW, there are a number of books providing summary data:
W Chorley Bomber Command Losses volumes,
Gunby & Temple RAF Bomber Losses in the Middle East and Mediterranean Vol I 1939–1942
N Franks RAF Fighter Command Losses of the Second World War,
R McNeill Coastal Command Losses,
Errol Martyn For Your Tomorrow (for NZ airmen),
Alison & Hayward They Shall Grow Not Old for Canadian airmen,
and for FE PoWs, Stubbs & Stubbs Unsung Heroes of the RAF
- If you know your man’s Squadron, brief summaries of his unit’s history can be found in
Halley’s Squadrons of the Royal Air Force 1918–1988
Jefford’s RAF Squadrons,
Moyes’ Bomber Squadrons of the RAF & Their Aircraft
Rawlings’ Fighter Squadron’s of the RAF & Their Aircraft
and for Australia,
either the complete official Units of the RAAF - A concise history
or Eather's Flying Squadrons of the Australian Defence Force
- For other RAF units, Sturtivant’s RAF Flying Training and Support Units Since 1912 is invaluable. And like all Air Britain publications, it carries a most helpful table of RAF abbreviations.
- If you just know the aircraft type of your man’s Squadron, perhaps the best book to begin with is Jefford’s RAF Squadrons, from which you can check which units used that aircraft and work forward from there.
- Official guides, whether on-line or printed, offer useful introductions to national records. A selection of printed British and RAF guides:
Air Force Records for Family Historians, Spencer, PRO (TNA) 2000
The Second World War: A Guide to Documents in the PRO, Cantwell, PRO (TNA) 1998
Tracing Your Family History: Royal Air Force IWM 2007
- Not to mention private efforts along the same lines
Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors Tomaselli Pen and Sword 2007
A Guide to Military History on the Internet Fowler Pen and Sword 2007.
On-line sources
There are plenty of these, too. Here is a summary, focussed on official sources for Air Force service and units. Detailed links to them all are on the Sites and Links page:
- Check the websites of the RAF, RAF Museum, National Archives/PRO, or the National Archives of Australia/RAAF Records, or the Library and Archives Canada, the War Museum Canada, or Archives NZ, RNZAF, RNZAF Museum, or NZETC. Most include on-line guides or leaflets
- Many archives now offer not only guides and leaflets but on-line searching of their collections, at least to title level, often with a brief abstract of the item, often with an option to lodge an order for a copy (check costs first), sometimes with access to digitised records themselves. Examples include Commonwealth War Graves Commission/Search Our Records, Imperial War Museum/Collections on-line, RAF Museum/Navigator, UK National Archives/Catalogue and National Archives/Documents on-line, Australian War Memorial/Collection databases, Australian National Archives/Record Search, and Flight/Archive
- At RAF Cranwell, the RAF Disclosures Unit can provide copies of service records but only to the subject or their next of kin. However, if your request recognises that the release of personal information is restricted by law, the RAF may be able to provide at least bare dates of service and unit.
- At RAF Innsworth, the RAF Personnel Management Agency can provide details of decorations and citations.
- If your subject didn’t survive the war, while you’re waiting, try the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site
- In Australia, also try the World War II Nominal Roll, the Australian War Memorial and Australians at War websites
- With name (and/or service no), it is worth checking the on-line London Gazette for details of decorations and (in the case of officers and warrant officers) promotions
- For airmen of Canadian origin, see the RCAF Honours and Awards page
- If you know his unit and/or the aircraft type they used, also check the RAF site RAF Squadron and Aircraft histories, or the Air of Authority site
- For the RAAF, see the RAAF Museum Squadron and Aircraft histories pages and the ADF Serials site
- Look for the webpage of the Squadron or their Association (start with the RAFRA site), or try the many veterans contact sites
- The British Aviation Archaeology Council keeps a good and growing list of RAF Squadron books on its Research page
- Good lists of RAF unit and other abbreviations and terms are also to be found on the Royal Air Forces Register of Associations site.
Doing it
You’re looking for answers: order from chaos. You may find it a help to have an ordered plan, and to keep notes, copies, ideas and emails in some sort of order. Take time to review what you’re finding: what it means, how it fits together, what pattern it makes, what connections—or inconsistencies—are appearing out of the mist. Prefer open questioning “How did they do that?” to bald assertion “It must have been...”. The first path leads to new leads and understanding, the second to dead ends and errors.
Look out for connections: pointers, ideas, names, places and events related to your main focus. Keep an eye on them all, as they will multiply like rabbits. Prefer the ones that seem most closely related and accessible to begin with. Learn to look at them, to become familiar with them, to assess which ones you should follow now, which to return to later, which to note but abandon. Look for inconsistencies too: always wiser to check than to ignore, and sometimes paying quite startling dividends.
Key words
As you learn to see the place you are searching in, a set of keywords (events, names, units, equipment, places, sources etc) will emerge. Whether you choose to keep them in the back of your mind or as a checklist, these keywords will be a help for further study. Note, their keywords, rather than yours. So in the Army you might look for “War Diary”, in the RAF “Operations Record Book”. Learn their jargon: it will help.
Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes: those who were there then, those who recorded then, those who remember now, and those who search, report and interpret now. Watch for them, compare them, note them but correct them only when you have clear evidence that you're right. If you do put forward a correction, make sure you explain the change: silent corrections are only for minor spelling slips and the like.
How close to the events are your sources? Primary contemporary sources (written at the time by a participant) are very, very valuable but not necessarily “right”. And how primary is primary? You’d think an Operations Record Book was a bullet-proof source but style, content and quality are very variable, even within the one unit over time.
Mistakes by participants are most often made in all good faith. There are several well known tricks of the mind that often bedevil reporting, even reporting soon after the event. Vivid events tend to have a sort of stickiness from the start, while the passage of time tends to telescope events. Some examples:
Events that were separate may be recalled as a single event
Events that happened to a close colleague may be recalled as having happened to the observer
Details learnt much later may be recalled as part of the observer’s own experience
The real damage is done by credulous and uncritical third party reporters tempted to interpret by mere assertion, or to repeat stories from inadequate sources without adequate checking. In the Chinese whispers game, errors gain credence through repeated simplification, until the muddled story is rusted over the framework of truth.
You will make mistakes too. It is all too easy to see what you want to see, in photographs or documents. Dates and events will get stuck together in your mind, too, while clear connections and equally clear inconsistencies may unaccountably elude you.
Take time to step back, return and recheck your stuff later. Get someone else to read your stuff. Correct your own blunders promptly. A website is easy to update, but hard for those without PCs to read. A book is easy to read but hard to update.
Cover-ups, conspiracies and can’t find nuthin’
They must have hidden it all!
Rubbish. Think cock-up before cover-up. They were ordinary people just like you. They made mistakes and they lost things, in the press of events, through enemy action, through carelessness, and over the passage of the last 60 or 70 years. Have a cup of tea and start again tomorrow.
www.211squadron.org © D Clark & others 1998–2010
Site created 15 Apr 2001, last updated 31 Jul 2010. Page created 30 Oct 2002, last updated 26 Jan 2010
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